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Dec. 26th, 2015 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI’m reading a book of short historical biographies. The entry on El Cid is illustrated with a picture from the movie that is captioned, "Charlton Heston in his most famous role, that of Rodrigo Diaz, El Cid." I did a double take on reading that because in what universe? I have no idea which role is considered the one Heston performed best, but surely Moses is more widely known than El Cid? And what about Ben-Hur? The only reason I know that the movie, El Cid, exists is because we watched it in high school Spanish in the early 1980s. And it’s not the age of the book. The copyright date on that is 2014.
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Date: 2015-12-27 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-27 01:47 am (UTC)El Cid is very famous in the Spanish speaking world, but... Even there, Moses is better known. And I don't know that the movie version of El Cid was ever anywhere near as well known as the others you mentioned.
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Date: 2015-12-31 11:21 am (UTC)Though to be fair, my first thought of him is his appearance as himself several years ago on my favourite soap.
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Date: 2015-12-31 07:32 pm (UTC)The book was very interesting in as much as it touched very lightly on a lot of different people's lives, but the author tended to assert things that, I think, require some supporting evidence. He claimed, for example, that Eleanor of Aquitaine never loved Henry II. Which-- Maybe she didn't. I don't know, and I don't see how he can. I'm also not sure that it's relevant when he's only spending three (heavily illustrated) pages on the entirety of her life.
(And he did biographies of Eleanor and Beckett but not of Henry II.)
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Date: 2016-01-01 02:44 am (UTC)That does seem a little unnecessary - I'm certain there are more relevant details to Eleanor's life than that, at least, in a short version.